Chapter ThreeThe Hall of Kings

Ten years ago, Richard never would have guessed that he'd be the founder and president of the largest game company in the world. He had already retired once, after cashing out and resigning from the company he had founded before, the one that built a robotic arm for remote surgery. The loss of his wife had been hard on him, and he was burned out. He bought a house in Sausalito, a town on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, and when he wasn't taking care of Adam he occupied his time smoking pot and playing video games– things he'd always wanted to do, but never had the time for.

At the same time, he began to entertain the idea of an exoskeletal rig that could restrict movement of the joints of the hand and arm to give the user the feeling of grabbing. He wasn't sure of its marketability and he didn't really care. It felt good to sit at the workbench, tinkering with actuators and microcontrollers. His son, who was four years old then, would sit next to him and watch him test, revise and iterate. Young Adam was transfixed by the 3D printer and would sit for hours, literally watching layers of plastic dry on top of each other.

Sitting at the workbench, Richard was alone with his thoughts for the first time in a long time. He thought about the kind of world he wanted to live in, the kind of world he wanted his son to live in. Lauren had died of breast cancer two years after their son was born. He had passionately buried himself in his work when she was still alive, so much that it had created a lot of tension within their new family, and losing her had filled him with regret that he had not taken the time to appreciate her more. Now he was alone, with nothing to appreciate but the boy and the plastic drying.

Richard thought about heaven. He could get behind a God, at least abstractly, but the afterlife seemed farfetched. But what if people didn't die? What if they could go on living? Maybe not their bodies, but their minds.

Heaven was the ultimate video game.

Richard had not seriously played a video game in a long time– he was acutely aware of his own obsessive tendencies and had banned himself from playing games since he was a teenager, too ambitious to allow himself much distraction from his work. But now there was no work and he was filthy rich, so he split his time evenly between playing with his son, tinkering on his workbench and playing video games.

He tried all kinds of games. From the real classics– Richard had a nice collection of coin-op machines in the basement– to the latest MMOs, space simulations and first-person shooters. He tried them all, and became pretty accomplished in a few. He enjoyed the fantasy MMORPG stuff, it brought him back to his days as a teenager playing D&D with his friends, but it all felt the same– grinding out levels, standing in front of enemies as his character swung a sword or took a hit. It wasn't exciting or imaginative. It didn't scratch his itch.

Richard wanted a game he could play with his hands, feet and voice. He wanted to cast spells by reciting incantations. He wanted to go on quests outside, in the world, dispatching monsters with physical strength and speed, or strategy and intellect. Pretty soon he was making his own game, a simple hackjob that was one part geocaching, one part Google Maps, two parts Dungeons & Dragons, all mixed up in a blender and packaged as Altered World Beta.

Some hardcore enthusiasts had spent a small fortune hodge-podging VR, omnidirectional treadmills and skeletal tracking to create a realistic gaming experience, but the cost was prohibitive for most people. Mobile and casual audiences were dictating the market and competitive play still favored the keyboard and mouse. Emerging technologies had to cater to game makers who were perfectly content to develop games that didn't require a bunch of expensive hardware.

So Richard hacked together open-source hand tracking, environment mapping and voice recognition libraries. His game would all run on a smartphone, which would double as a head mounted display, and game objects were imposed onto the camera feed. Richard redesigned his arm rig to be simple, not especially accurate but very affordable. For just over a hundred bucks you could be a warrior mage, exploring the world around you on quests and battling with your friends. It was an easy pitch for a generation hungry to make reality more interesting and video games more realistic.

Richard installed a small server farm in his garage and put up ads for a free open beta on a few gamer forums. Even in the game's primitive form the servers were quickly overloaded, and the demand for hardware was insatiable. Within a few months, Solenoid Experiential Games was incorporated, infused with capital and set loose in an old industrial building in West Oakland. Around that time, Max entered the picture.

Max was a neurophysiologist and engineer. Her hard German features and brooding demeanor made her appear far more serious than she actually was. She'd worked for Richard for a time at his first company, specializing in small cameras for minimally invasive surgery, and they had become close friends. She was on vacation with her daughter in San Francisco when she called Richard for a drink. They met at a bookstore cafe on Nob Hill.

"... So let me get this straight. You're aiming right at their eyes?" Richard was excited.

"Yes."

"So when you say glasses..."

"They wouldn't need to have lenses, although they could be fitted with lenses for users who needed them. They would just need to be frames, big enough to hold the projectors."

"How big would the frames need to be?"

"Very small, actually. Enough room for a tiny motor and a little bit of fiber. A little compartment behind the ear for a battery on one side, Bluetooth and a microcontroller on the other."

"And you have a prototype?"

"It's a hack, a proof of concept at best, but yeah."

"I'm surprised you aren't making me sign an NDA."

"Telling you what I'm doing is a lot different than showing you how I did it."

"This gives me a lot of ideas, Max."

"I was hoping it would."

"How long are you in town for?"

"Three days."

"If you're around tomorrow, why don't you swing by the office?"

"Sure. I'll have to bring my little girl with me."

"That's alright with me. You didn't by chance bring that prototype with you on this trip, did you?"

"I did."

"We've got some pretty cool stuff at the office that we haven't told anyone about." Richard smiled. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

That conversation was strictly business, but it led to a collaboration that had been wildly successful for both of them, and over the years it had made them something like family. Soph had asked her mom, more than once, why she had not married Richard. Max was evasive on the issue. She had known him when he was married to Lauren, and she still didn't think he had fully accepted that she was gone. What she never said was that she had already watched one man she loved leave the world by inches, and did not care to do it again.

Atom honked. It was an ostentatious gesture– he could have just sent Soph a text to let her know that he was waiting outside, but he couldn't resist. He'd seen too many movies where the guy honked his horn when he came to pick up his girl, and this was the first time he had a car to do it with.

Soph got in. "Really? Your dad gave you the Camry?"

"Yeah. He's a practical guy."

"Wow. I just figured, you know, he'd buy you a Corvette or something."

Atom laughed. "You don't know my dad, then. Hey, you look hot."

Company parties at Solenoid were raucous and exciting. To the observer it might look like a bunch of goggled-in tech geeks walking around a dimly lit and poorly decorated company gymnasium, but to the glowing paladins, eagle-eyed rangers and swashbuckling rogues in attendance it was a journey into the Hall of the Great Kings, where exalted warriors and great lords danced, drank and laughed together. Solenoid employees took the whole affair very seriously. RP points were a big thing.

Soph's outfit was a cross between classic steampunk and medieval barmaid. She wore her frames atop her flowing brown hair like a headband. Atom's brown boots and duster coat were equally ostentatious– subtle cosplay for an Altered World event. Altered World could superimpose equipment pretty realistically, but dressing in character was common among serious players, and the children of the founders had a certain reputation to maintain.

They arrived at the Solenoid campus already goggled in, and weaved through the crowd to where Max was clinking glasses of champagne with other members of the Tech Priests. Solenoid's divisions were organized into guilds, and as the head researcher at The Lab, Max was also the Guildmaster of the Tech Priests, who wore green.

"To fifty good years, Max," said one. "And a hundred more!"

"Ha! I should be so lucky. Oh, Soph, Atom! Good to see you! Jeff, this is my daughter, and this young man is Richard's son. This is Jeff Matheson."

Jeff's cloak bore the blue insignia of the Artificers Guild, the developers of Altered World. "A pleasure to meet you both. I've heard many good things."

Soph blushed.

"Jeff's the head developer of the game," said Max.

"Greis the Valorous?" asked Atom.

Jeff smiled. "Ah, I should have assumed that you'd be on the forums. You are correct, although I'm afraid I'm too busy to play him very much these days."

"Man, I'd really love to pick your brain sometime."

"Perhaps, if I can pick yours. I've got a few projects in the pipeline that could use some QA testing by folks who really know the game. I'm not flattering you, you and Soph are really good. Have you thought about competing?"

"The Koreans would cream us." Soph grimaced. Altered World had effectively become the national pastime of South Korea.

"It's true that nineteen of the top twenty players in the world are Korean," said Jeff, "but number two right now is a Canadian girl, only a few years older than you both, and I hear she lives in the woods. Some people are just naturals. And you have both been playing for as long as anyone."

"A girl?" said Atom. "Rat? I thought Rat was a guy."

"I have access to the account records," said Jeff. "You'd be surprised what's in them."

They were interrupted by the ringing of a champagne glass. The room fell silent. Richard stood at a podium at the far end of the gym, outfitted in gold finery, six and a half feet tall in the frames and pointy of ear. His voice thundered.

"We are gathered here today for two very important reasons. First, it is Guildmaster Ehrlich's fiftieth birthday. Where is that old witch? Max, I summon thee!"

The crowd cheered. Max excused herself and walked up to the stage. Richard bowed.

"Priestess Ehrlich, I'm proud to have you with us. The Hall of Kings wouldn't be what it is without you. I am honored by your continued allegiance."

Max curtsied, badly. "Anything for the realm, Lord Lee." Laughs erupted from the crowd.

"And I have been informed that your Tech Priests have a new machine for the realm?"

"We do."

"Well then, to our second order of business. Priestess Ehrlich, you have the room. Bring out the machine!" Richard stepped away. The lights in the room dimmed. Two Tech Priests appeared from behind a curtain, carrying a platform with a workstation and a helmet like the one that Soph and Atom had seen at the lakehouse. This one had no wires coming out of it.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it is a glorious day for the world. We have developed the most holy of machines, one that can harness the mind." Max put the helmet on her head. She muttered an incantation, and suddenly a ghost-like clone of herself stood next to her. She turned to face the apparition. "Hello, Priestess."

The apparition turned too, and replied, "Hello to you, too, Priestess."

"This simulacrum is me just as much as I am. If I think a thought, she will speak. She will go where I wish her to."

"Now, I apologize but I must break character for a bit." The apparition disappeared.

"The device that I'm wearing is called the Link. Users who have one will be able to project themselves anywhere in the world where there are other users and see what they are seeing. In game, players with the Link will be a new class, called mentalists. A mentalist binds her mind to another player, and as long as she stays close to the player she is bound to she'll be able to talk, move and even fight."

"Our company blends real world experiences with virtual ones. It is what makes us different. Why then, would we make a product that enables someone to be somewhere they are not, or talk with their mind and not their body?" Max paused for rhetorical effect.

"The honest answer is that we don't know, entirely. Not yet, at least. We see many applications for this in the future, and we hope that by releasing a platform our users might come up with some interesting ideas. We've created a sandbox server where users can develop their ideas and tap into the Link's API."

"Years ago I met with Richard for coffee on a whim. He didn't know it at the time but I had already made up my mind to come work for him. We talked early on about what the future of this company was. We wanted to make something more than an immersive game. To what end, I don't think any of us are entirely sure. But we want to make something that touches people deeply and improves their lives. The Link is just the first step. I leave it up to all of you to determine the path."

The room erupted in grand applause. Max stepped away and Richard took the podium.

"I have one last thing to say. Like Max said, we've just created an interface. It's up to all of you to figure out what we're going to do with it and, more importantly, to make sure that people buy them. Now let's drink and be merry!"

More applause and cheers from the crowd.

Atom was quiet for a minute afterward, which was unusual enough that Soph looked at him.

"What?"

"I don't know. It's weird. She just stood there talking to herself."

"It was cool."

"It was cool. It's just weird. If I can be anywhere, why would I go anywhere?"

"You'd go wherever I was."

"Yeah." He put his arm around her. "Okay. I'd buy one for that."

Across the gym a paladin was already trying to bribe a Tech Priest for a dev unit, and Jeff Matheson, who had been watching the two of them over the rim of his glass, went to get more champagne.